This study seeks to enumerate the extensive and variegated use of the Hebrew Bible in early Jewish magic. The survey focuses mainly on the key Jewish magical corpora from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages – Palestinian Amulets, Babylonian magic bowls, assorted magical texts from the Cairo Geniza, and several magical handbooks deriving from Babylonia and other indeterminate locations. The article is divided into three substantive sections. The first treats numerous methodological pitfalls tied to the use of the terms ‘magic,’‘Jewish magic,’ and ‘Hebrew Bible.’ The second and third sections are devoted, respectively, to the two broad formal categories into which magical use of the Hebrew Bible may be divided, citations of biblical verses and biblical historiolae.

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The present study seeks to illuminate how the recitation of the prophylactic magical hymns known as 4QSongs of the Sage engendered religious experience for worshipers. Previous research on this composition has focused on locating it within the broader streams of early Jewish magical and apocalyptic tradition, but little attention has been paid to the apotropaic function of the Songs within the larger religious experiential framework implied by the text. This study argues that despite the lack of concrete information pertaining to ritual praxis, the language of the Songs reveals that participation in the ritual was designed to bring worshipers to understand themselves as realizing essential Qumranite ideals such as perfect purity and supernal knowledge, and to experience communion with the angels in the image of "the eternal sanctuary." It is suggested that the protection from the demons offered by the Songs is not so much the result of "magic" as it is a natural outcome of the perceived attainment of these ideals.

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This article offers some new suggestions regarding the background and purpose of theBook of Giants in the light of recent scholarship emphasizing (1) the shared features andinterrelatedness of the Aramaic works discovered at Qumran and (2) the need to groundour understanding of early Jewish apocalyptic literature within the socio-political contextof Hellenistic imperial domination. While this intriguing composition has beenlocated correctly within the orbit of early Enochic tradition, the present study broadensthe lens in order to consider the significance of its striking parallels with Danielic tradition,beyond the well-known shared tradition of the throne theophany (4Q530 2 ii 16–20and Dan 7:9–10). Due attention is given both to the Danielic parallels and the transformationsin Giants vis-à-vis the Enochic tradition upon which it depends (the Book ofWatchers), which are interpreted in relation to recent research emphasizing that theearly Enochic and Danielic writings constituted expressions of resistance to imperialrule. In line with this literary and historical contextualization, the study argues for aparadigmatic interpretation of Giants, according to which the monstrous sons of thewatchers symbolize the violent, arrogant Hellenistic rulers of the author’s day.